Southern Cross’ NEXT Cable to Bring Next-Level Speeds to APAC

October 25, 2017

William Heng, Sales Engineering Director, APAC

In many cases, you have to know where to look, but data centres are the tangible proof of an industry that is in the midst of transforming the way humans work, live, and communicate. Much less visible but arguably equally important to this fundamental transformation are submarine cables.

Submarine cables, bundles of fibre optic cables laid directly on the ocean floor, transmit data over incredibly long distances, making our world effectively smaller than ever before. With more cable being laid all the time, most people don't realise how much is already down there. In total, these cables are hundreds of thousands of miles long and carry 99% of international data.

Though there is progress on different cables each day, Southern Cross’ NEXT cable project has been making headlines as of late, and for good reason. That’s because not all cables are created equal. Stretching 9,320 miles from Southern California to New South Wales, Australia, the NEXT cable will “deliver the fastest connection between the shores of Australia, New Zealand and [the] US,” providing an additional 60Tbps over the current 20Tbps capacity.

But it's not just the locations at the two terminus points that will be impacted. In fact, the greatest potential impact will arguably be found in the locations between. With APAC being the world’s fastest growing economic region, there are many emerging economies that could directly benefit from being in the path of this new cable. Among those that have already signed on are the Pacific islands of Fiji, Samoa, Tokelau, and Kiribati.